


Hats That Make the Heart Beat Faster

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adaar is concerned about Dorian’s safety, Dorian is concerned about upsetting his aesthetic, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 06:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13584711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: In the Fallow Mire, Adaar finds a helmet for Dorian.





	Hats That Make the Heart Beat Faster

**Author's Note:**

> I started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition and I put the “adventurer hat” on Dorian in the Fallow Mire, and then I wondered about the narrative causality it would take to make that happen.
> 
> Title is from a quote by some fashion guy named Philip Treacy. I have no excuses and offer no apologies.

Dorian Pavus made the decision to cast off the elegant trappings of his birthright for many reasons.

He had done it for Tevinter. He had done it for Alexius, and Felix. He had even, in no small part, done it for himself - cast aside all of the honor and prestige to rid himself of the venom that came along with it; fought his way free of the sick, sinking weight of guilty suspicion that had dropped ignobly into his stomach right around the age he first started noticing that some of the other noble boys had very pretty eyes and lush mouths, the same guilt that had curdled into horrible understanding at the sting of a blade against his skin by his own father’s hand some number of years and intimate indiscretions later. Not that he foresaw ever sharing that particular sordid bit of personal history with a bunch of roughshod Southern mercenaries. Not here, at least, poised on the edge of the end of the world.

The reasons he had done it were varied and important, but Dorian could say with equivalent certainty that all of the pain and trouble and exile had not been in the interest of slogging waist-deep through a corpse-riddled bog, only to stop and stare as the man who would be the savior of Thedas smiled at him, lopsided and hopeful, and proffered a helm of deeply atrocious taste.

“You _cannot_ be serious.”

“I know it looks a little silly,” the Herald of Andraste said, and a twisting rope of wind burrowed between them to kick the feather perched jauntily at the helm’s crown into a spastic dance, as if to heighten the reality of the sentiment, “but it’ll help. There’s no knowing what we’re going to run into out here.”

“An utterly absurd number of shambling corpses and more demons than you can shake a stick at, I should guess,” Dorian said primly, keeping his arms crossed over his chest and refusing to do himself the disservice of looking directly at the monstrosity hovering before him. “Cultists, perchance, if we are indeed lucky enough to survive all the rest.”

The Herald - Adaar, if Dorian weren’t in a bit of strop, and increasingly even then, despite Dorian’s best efforts to maintain professional distance - sighed.

“Please?” he pressed, stepping in just a little closer. That Qunari could give off quite so much heat even in the miserable chill of the Fallow Mire was magic enough in its own right to deserve dedicated study, Dorian was certain. Mages tended to run hot, but this was ridiculous, like standing next to a walking, talking bonfire. “I would rather we all prioritized safety over style.”

Dorian scoffed.

“You stopped wearing your vitaar because you thought it clashed with your armor,” he accused mulishly.

Privately, he had agreed that it was the right choice - the bright reds and blues had looked garish against the gleaming metal of Adaar’s armor, the brilliant bands of silver sheathing each of his horns where they snaked to a point a foot or so behind his head - but he wasn’t above reinterpreting his opinions to better suit his current argument. It was the Tevinter in him, twisting like a serpent to its own best interests.

“I ran out,” Adaar corrected, though he looked shifty. Behind him, the Iron Bull snorted a cloud of amused heat into the frigid air. Dorian would bet good money that his single eye was rolling in its socket.

“Liar,” Dorian muttered. A part of himself marveled distantly at the fact that he had stopped in the middle of an Inquisition mission to have a bit of a domestic with the savior of the world at large. If only the little boy he had been - young and spoiled and hungry for so many things that only time would prove didn’t suit - could see him now, Dorian thought, only slightly hysterical.

“I’ll requisition some more, as soon as we get back,” Adaar assured, looking for a moment nearer to a sheep than a Qunari.

“I can help with that,” the Iron Bull offered cheerfully over the whipping of the wind. Adaar didn’t quite manage to mask the slight, disappointed flinch at the corners of his eyes or the way resignation pulled his stately shoulders into a disappointed slope.

Dorian was alarmed to discover his usual state of smug vindication run through with ribbons of something like regret.

“You don’t have to,” he sighed, irritated by many things, though none so much as the resolute, martyrish determination in Addar’s face. “It’s hardly as if I’m the one leading this little outfit. Wear, or don’t wear, whatever you please. I’m certain nobody would so much as blink if you elected to traverse the realms of Thedas in the nude so long as the rifts still get closed.”

Adaar huffed a laugh and ducked his head in that shy, unassuming way that seemed so out of place on a man of his imposing size and strength.

“No,” he said, with a short shake of his head and a twist to his mouth that Dorian was reluctant to label exasperated fondness, though he had seen its like on enough faces in recent days to make a guess. “You’re right. I need to lead by example.”

“Because marching tirelessly about this Makerforsaken continent running errands for everyone down to the corpses you stumble over isn’t example enough,” Dorian griped.

“It’s a start,” Adaar allowed, “but we can do better.” This smile couldn’t be anything but fondness, warm and soft like the settled embers of a fire. Something in Dorian’s chest twinged painfully.

“Come on,” Adaar continued gently, as if Dorian hadn’t just insulted him to his face and inadvertently cast aspersions on the quality of his leadership. He stepped in, near enough that the delicious breadth of his body blocked out most of the bog from Dorian’s field of view, that glorious warmth coming off him in comforting curtains. His hopeful grin went a little sharp, tilted higher at the corners even as he dipped his head to say in a low rumble that curled up Dorian’s spine, “I would hate to see anything happen to that pretty face of yours.”

Dorian narrowed his eyes. He felt heat bleed through his cheeks in a heady rush - probably because he had contracted some kind of fever from this awful damp. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, he’d picked up the plague at that funeral pyre they’d passed not long ago. It was by no means a reaction to the veiled insinuations in that statement or the tone thereof, it was plain debilitating human illness and nobody was going to tell him otherwise.

After a brief moment of eye contact - barely a few seconds, despite how Varric might later put it down in one of his tawdry retellings - Dorian reached out and let his fingers curl over the lip of the helm. If they happened to press right up against the naked flesh of Adaar’s marked hand for a heartbeat, it was purely coincidence.

“I’m only doing this because somebody needs to hold you accountable for your own safety,” Dorian explained primly.

“Of course,” Adaar agreed, immediate and easy. He let his grin tilt toward teasing, eyes sparkling like banked coals. “It has nothing to do with an appeal to your vanity.”

“Hundreds of years of careful genetic manipulation went into this perfect visage,” Dorian replied haughtily, taking the helm in both hands. “It would be a tragedy to ruin it for something as ridiculous as a bracing dip in bog water.”

“Absolutely,” Adaar nodded in agreement.

“If you’re doing this for a laugh, I’m leaving you here with the corpses and going back to my nice, warm bed in Haven while you suffer,” Dorian added warningly, helm poised overhead.

“I would never,” Adaar assured, and it was another magic trick entirely, the way he widened his eyes just-so, radiating goodwill and innocence despite the healthy seven foot and spare of him, or the wicked, spiked pommel of his maul jutting up over his broad shoulders in vicious promise.

“I mean it,” Dorian insisted. “Not a peep from a single one of you or you’ll be out here with nothing but Bianca while I take my lightning where it, and I, are more appropriately appreciated.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad to me,” Varric muttered, amused, from somewhere beyond the solid wall of Adaar’s body where he was posted up in front of Dorian like some kind of living privacy screen. Dorian didn’t bother to dignify it with a response.

“Nobody laugh at Dorian,” Adaar said, in that patient, expectant tone he had that never made it seem like he was delivering orders, while simultaneously assuring that everyone of a certain constitution within earshot agreed wholeheartedly that his proclamation was the best course of action available by far and heeded it as if it were divine writ.

The Iron Bull snorted again. Dorian sighed.

It had been a kind thought on Adaar’s part, trying to suppress the barbed joie de vivre of their current traveling companions, though Dorian doubted its efficacy, given the sheer strength of personality that Varric and the Iron Bull each possessed in spades.

Ah, well. He had done far more foolish things in the hope of much poorer returns during the course of his misspent youth.

He slipped the helmet on over his carefully coiffed locks - which were only kept in place by magic inasmuch as quality hair product was its own sort of carefully brewed potion, thank you Varric - with all the enthusiasm and grace of a mabari dog having its annual bath. Small blessing, Dorian thought, that he’d been spared the indignity of having a tail to try to tuck and wag at the same time.

“There,” Dorian said decidedly, to fill the space between them so that he wasn’t tempted to ford it. He was pointedly not thinking about the soft set of Adaar’s eyes or the sweet, pleased curve of his grin. “With any luck, word will travel that the Herald’s party is very much in keeping with the Orlesian aesthetic of gauche headwear and win us a bit of favor.”

“You’re practically a cultural ambassador,” Adaar agreed, reaching out to bump the knuckles of his gloved hand gently against Dorian’s chin beyond the spanning edges of the helm. He grinned and added teasingly, “I’ll have Josie give you an official title once we’ve handled things here.”

Dorian didn’t smile, because there was only so much enthusiasm he could muster while wearing a stupid helmet in the middle of a blighted bog, even for one the greatest men he’d ever had the chance to meet. Particularly when two others of decidedly poorer quality - an assessment dictated in no measure by the fact that their prowess with pithy one-liners rivaled his own, with none of their esteemed leader’s aversion to wielding those razor tongues to harm as well as humor - were watching with blatant enjoyment, as if this little scene were the latest and greatest in dramatic theatre. Still, the grim, snarling rictus he’d been wearing throughout the majority of this eldritch jaunt settled into something a bit softer.

Adaar gave him another of those shuttered, sweet looks and then turned that proud jaw of his toward the next rickety plank bridge and the unbridled terrors lurking beyond.

To their credit, both Varric and the Iron Bull managed to restrain their mirth, even if the latter did wag his eyebrows a bit, which was about as tame a response as Dorian could have hoped for. Instead, as they trooped along in Adaar’s wake, Varric clapped a meaty palm to Dorian’s arm and murmured, “You got it _bad_ , kid,” while he pressed past, which was, in many ways, worse.

Poorer returns, Dorian reminded himself, tucking the heat and closeness and soft shared smiles away for study at a later date, and turned to follow the Herald.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
